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The term Shift Left refers to a practice in software development where teams focus on quality, work on prevention instead of detection, and begin testing earlier than ever before . The goal is to increase quality, shorten long test cycles, and reduce the possibility of unpleasant surprises at the end of the development cycle—or still worse, in production. In many organizations, automated testing of today’s composite applications is being executed via the user interface, once the complete application has been developed and deployed.... [More]

Just a short note to make all aware of some upcoming webcasts. The content to be presented during these events should really help teams address their continuous testing and continuous deployment challenges. Shift Left to better business results: Speed delivery of higher quality software. October 15, 2014 - 1 pm ET Many of today's organizations struggle to deliver quality software at the speed their users demand. Successful organizations are moving to a DevOps approach and shifting testing to the left. But what does a shift left... [More]

It’s amazing to reflect back on how far service virtualization technology has come in the last two years since IBM acquired Green Hat. Back then, when I spoke with customers, they would either say “what’s service virtualization?”, or they would refer to it as a cool new technology that they’ve been meaning to investigate. What a difference two years makes. The recent report ,... [More]

Have you ever wondered how and why certain individuals get promoted as featured speakers at conferences and events? Is this the type of attention you would like for yourself? If you haven’t already figured it out, it is because they work very hard at promoting themselves. Their reward; credibility in the industry. They probably have a large number of social followers or their blogs are regularly read by thousands of people - people like you and me. Our reward in listening to them; we might just learn something new and innovative.... [More]

You stay in this business long enough and you get to a point where everything old is new again. Seriously, it’s like the fashion industry. I always chuckle remembering my daughter’s shock that I, um, had also worn bell bottoms. And this is exactly what I think about when I hear all the chatter about the fragmentation of testing for mobile applications. There are a billion device combinations. Yup. Hasn’t there always been? About 10 years ago, to help choose how to test and to make a point, I did a spreadsheet with... [More]

I seem to be talking and thinking about continuous testing, um, continuously lately. I had a little epiphany last week when I concluded that most of the pipeline is for testing. The pipeline starts with a continuous integration build where unit testing happens and a package, installable entity is produced. The pipeline ends when that packaged entity is deployed into production. Every step in between is for testing. Different kinds of testing, but they are all testing. So at a minimum, when there’s only one test stage, 30% of the pipeline... [More]

I had an awesome time last Saturday at CITCON in Boston. Not only were the views amazing but the conversations were thought provoking. The conference follows open-space technology which means that all the topics are meaningful to the participants (we get to vote!) and there is lots of interaction in every session. I continue to be thinking about the issues related to test data in the continuous delivery pipeline that was a CITCON topic. It’s typical to create test automation expecting certain sets of data to be available.... [More]

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Agile Alliance conference, for the third straight year, which was held in Nashville from August 5th to 9th. And while it is always a fabulous and worthwhile event, this year the conference just seemed to be a little different to me. Perhaps it was just my perception but last year after talking to many attendees about service virtualization and continuous testing, I left several conversations with the feeling that I missed sharing something in my message. While the person may have gained a new... [More]

Earlier this year, IBM commissioned Forrester Research to examine the total economic impact and potential return on investment (ROI) of the IBM Rational solution for Test Automation (Rational Test Workbench and Rational Test Virtualization Server) investigating the results of a customer opportunity. The efforts of the study clearly suggests that companies who invest in service virtualization do increase their productivity and will realize a positive ROI. A positive ROI in a very short amount of time. The customer opportunity examined... [More]

You were hired to test software or at least that is what you thought! Why is it that so many of the activities you are being asked to seem to have little to do with actually checking code quality or measuring a products conformance to a set of approved requirements. If you think about where your time goes, you are probably creating reports, setting up or recycling test environments, performing or participating in bug triage, etc.... The list of things you probably do is long. Then and only when you find that sliver of time to test, are you... [More]

We have all heard that to be successful businesses need to drive down costs, reduce software project risk and increase the speed at which software is delivered to the market. Right now you are probably thinking... "Great, tell me something I don't know!" The reality is that many companies are trying to continuously integrate, test and release their software but few are effective in doing so. Those who have figured out the "secret" are winning - beating their competition, increasing their market share, and... [More]

Perhaps at some conferences the last day of sessions may be the "What do we do with this one?" type of session scheduling, but not in the Quality Management and Testing track at Innovate 2013. Thursday promises a level of quality sessions equal to those already delivered across the week. The 4th day starts off with two sessions on Service Virtualization. The Service Virtualization for Dummies® session will net out the content from our new book . Definitely a must attend for all service virtualization newbies.... [More]

Wow time certainly does fly - 10 days until approx. 4000 people will arrive in Orlando for a week of enablement, fellowship and fun at Innovate 2013. And for those interested in what's happening in the Quality Management and Testing track, read on as I share a brief overview and "tips" for Day 3. Starting things off with a "Shift Left" in Room 1, this session shares insight on how to begin performance testing earlier simulating "real world" scenarios to improve the quality of today's... [More]

I have always loved that subtitle on Dr. Strangelove – “ How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” I have recently been thinking that better, faster, cheaper with continuous delivery and continuous testing means we really have to stop worrying about every defect. Which led me to Dr. Strangelove . It’s equally mind bending in some ways … so many years of looking under every rock for those defects. The worst possible thing was an “escape” to production and its requisite... [More]

I’m putting the finishing touches on my presentation for Innovate 2013 called " What’s the Real Deal with Testing? " My session will be Wednesday, June 5 th at 11:15 am. We’re going to have 90 minutes to talk about the real problems facing testers. Like what is this “continuous testing” thing? How much time do you spend setting up test environments and what’s the hardest part? Are you doing unattended testing? Do you want to? Join me for these topics and much, much more! If you... [More]

First off and as I am Canadian eh, I have to apologize for my tardiness between posts. Don't really know why I am apologizing - it is just something we Canadians seem to do. However, I know many are probably wondering what is going on at Innovate so here is a little insight aboot day 2 in the Quality Management and Testing track. First off, let's talk a little about Service Virtualization. For those who don't know what this means, "Service Virtualization is the ability to simulate the behavior of select... [More]

A colleague shared this article with me and much of the thinking aligns with where I’ve been landing on the topic of continuous testing. Of course, when reading the article, one thing jumps right out …. When the author, Marnie Hutcheson, expressed concerns about being able to complete the testing in the time frame specified (30 hours of testing, twice, over a weekend), she was, um, fired. Felt to me as abrupt as hearing “you’re fired” on a certain television show. And the most amazing... [More]

I’m still thinking about what the right content should be for continuous testing. My previous blog was about thinking about what test content matters. But there’s also the consideration of how much content and considering avoiding waste of building too much automation. I’ve had the experience several times of too much success (amazing, right?) in building automation. In those days, it was actually great to have a robust test automation suite that took 12-18 hours to run. We actually measured our success at... [More]

The Agile Manifesto guiding principles says, “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” (emphasis mine) So as teams have adopted agile development practices, we have rapidly hit the delivery wall. The current conventional wisdom says to reduce risk, deliver more frequently and to make sure you’re not changing very much. I mean really, how much can you screw up in a day (or even a week)? So, if you can’t really screw much up AND even if you do, you... [More]

Earlier this year, IBM hosted a webinar where we asked you, the customer, for feedback on Innovate. Well, the Quality Management and Testing Innovate team heard you loud and clear. For one, you said you wanted more sessions delivered by our customers and to hear the benefits they are realizing first hand. This year, we are offering more customer sessions than in years past. In fact two thirds of this year's agenda is being delivered by customers and our business partners. But we didn't stop there and believe we took this year's line... [More]